Biography
Onur Engin is a Research Associate on Spectres and Camouflage: The Sound of Silence (1938–1970), led by Dr. Fiona Smyth at the Faculty of Architecture. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, and is also a member of Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH). He earned his PhD in Art History from Koç University in Istanbul and his MA in International Relations from Paris-Panthéon-Assas University. His research interests include sound studies, auditory history, and the Late Ottoman Empire, and he employs computational methodologies such as digital cartography, data visualization, and network mapping.
His forthcoming monograph, Echoes over the Bosphorus: An Auditory History of Late Ottoman Istanbul (1826–1923) (Oxford University Press), examines three sound-producing instruments, church bells, cannons, and talking machines, as organizing principles to explore the city’s modernization and Ottoman policies from the perspectives of sound, hearing, and listening.
Publications
Echoes over the Bosphorus: An Auditory History of Late Ottoman Istanbul
Monograph under contract with Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027
“Whistles from Paradise: Late Ottoman Theatres as Contested Auditory Arenas”
Journal of Musicology, University of California Press, Autumn 2026 vol.43
“Hubbub, Howls, and Silence(s): Ideas of Noise in Late Ottoman Istanbul”
In Sound as Affect, Media, Data (Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing), forthcoming 2026
“‘Has a Mouth but no Tongue:’ Women’s Laughter in Late Ottoman Istanbul”
In Disquiet, eds. Peter McMurray and Nazan Maksudyan (chapter submitted, volume in preparation)
